Regions
The Catskills
The Catskills landscape varies from the blunt, lordly rise of its eastern escarpment near Saugerties, to the mountains, streams and ravines of the central mountains, to gentle dairy hillsides on the western borders. Towns and hamlets full of original architecture from the mid and late 19th century, when the Catskills reached their heyday as a resort destination, charm residents and visitors alike.
The Champlain Valley
Peaceful villages, farms stretched across rolling countryside, and the lake’s waters lapping against tranquil marinas give scarce hint of a strife-laden past when cannon shot roared across Lake Champlain as first the British and French, and then the British and Americans, struggled for dominancy during the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars.
The Hudson Valley
Seventeenth and eighteenth century stone houses of the original Dutch and Huguenot settlers, riverside mansions of Livingston clan landlords and Gilded Age industrialists, and landscapes that inspired the Hudson River School artists: these sights evoke legendary chapters of the valley’s rich history since Henry Hudson’s 1609 voyage.
The Mohawk Valley / Central New York
The most direct natural corridor from the East Coast to the nation’s interior, the valley’s geographic position made it a prime theater of empire-driven competition and military conflict from colonial times through the American Revolution. Before then, the Mohawk valley was an Iroquois homeland, and later it achieved heightened commercial significance with the arrival of the Erie Canal in 1821.
